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Well, it’s been quite a wait. After rifling through everything up to Dark Summoner, there was a long pause. Some of this was me hitting a wall: at 481 ilvl (at the time) I was nearing the limits of my skill with the bosses. Some of it was on Blizzard’s end: Brawler’s Guild was bugging out constantly for a period of a few weeks, with people “beating” bosses when others were accidentally teleported into the arena with them. So I purposefully took a break.

But, we’re back with another installment.

Dark Summoner

The first and most terrible thing about the fight is this: RNG and/or luck play a big factor, more so than any other fight. This is due to the ghosts that spawn. They one-shot you or your pet, and they have a 10-foot radius. This cannot be understated, their hit radius is huge compared to the arena you’re in, especially once 2-3 ghosts are up at the same time. The ghosts spawn at regular intervals, but where they spawn is random. If a ghost spawns right next to you or behind you, the fight is over and you lose. It’s technically possible to stun these, but your window is so small that you’re going to die. 90% of the challenge of this fight revolves around managing them.

For those who haven’t seen the fight, the boss is immune to attacks until a ghost is killed. He then becomes vulnerable to damage for a brief period of time. You also have a light that extends about 15 feet in front of you. This light can stun the ghosts, but you have to be facing them. The ghosts spawn faster than you can kill them (technically that’s not true, but you’re also working with a 2-minute enrage to kill the boss, so you can’t kill every ghost), and they’ll increase in number as the fight goes on. The boss himself does melee swings and casts shadow bolts that can be interrupted. Neither you nor your pet can eat the melee swings indefinitely, so you want to stay at range and keep top aggro (or let your pet die once, insta-rez him, then have top aggro yourself).

My Strategy (ilvl 489)

Drop a frost trap near the boss spawn

Make sure your pet is on Defensive stance

Back into a corner of your choice

Stun and kill the first ghost spawn, making sure not to send in your pet until you have stunned them with the “flashlight” mechanic.

Turn your attention to the boss, blow all dps cooldowns.

I kept my pet on the boss at this point. He died once from top aggro, but I Phoenix rezzed him and he was fine the rest of the fight.

Keep your back to the wall, and stay near the wall. This is to be able to see all ghost spawns and/or all ghosts coming toward you.

Alternate as needed between ghosts and boss. The number of ghosts you need to kill will be based on how quickly you can burn the boss

Optional: interrupt Shadow Bolts that he casts with Silencing Shot. I found that I wasn’t dying to these and was only worried about the ghosts. So I ignored them. Your mileage may vary.

Meatball is just a gag fight as a reward for making it through rank 8 (check the kill statistics from the NPC at the bar for your server, it’s funny).

Battletron is the first semi-serious gear check fight, but with items from 5.2 available hunters are very well-suited to kill him between a good cooldown to make a hole in his barrier, fully mobile and good burst DPS, and a good amount of self-healing without sacrificing DPS to get it between spirit bond and chimera shot or a spirit beast heal.

I haven’t done too many attempts on Battletron. It’s a bit of a gear check, so I may need to hold off on him for a bit again…right now, I’m probably VERY close to not making it before the enrage timer.

Get used to seeing the flames headed your way as you finish off the boss, because it will probably happen for all the bonus bosses. Just remember they always start in the north and take a good chunk of time to reach the southern wall, and you may even survive 1 extra tick with deterrence. Thankfully, unlike with the previous fights, you can kill the bonus bosses right before you die yourself and you WILL still get credit.

Yeah, one of my earlier videos featured this, where I only lived because I ran the correct direction just before the flames (it was GG). I just need to find the time to sit down and put the work in on Battletron.

And I know the gear is out there, but I didn’t raid a ton outside LFR in 5.1, so I’m a bit behind. Most confirmed or documented kills of Battletron I’ve seen have come with 495+ ilvl (I’ve seen claims of lower, but not confirmed or frequently), so I may still be just on the low end of it.

Nice job, thanks for the video. I’m sitting on a 512 iLevel and could easily burst down the Summoner but I can’t keep my pet alive more than 10 secs at a time. Its on defensive, growl is off…i’m at a loss. No matter what I do the pet invariably runs up and takes a pop at an unstunned ghost and gets one-shotted. Stupid brawlers guild nonsense.